LIN376H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Grammatical Gender, Personal Pronoun, French Language
Document Summary
The ongoing loss of categories and contrasts had existed in latin since time, and some of the categories affected included declension class, case, gender. Latin nouns fall into five classes, called declensions. Each noun varies according to its case, determined by its grammatical context. Direct objects are in the accusative case. Genitive expresses the of" relation often associated with possession. The ablative case marks a variety of spatial and instrumental relations. Each noun also has a grammatical gender; masculine, feminine or neuter. The following chart depicts a noun from each class, declined in these cases; singular and plural. Adjectives agree in gender and number with the noun they modify. Gender correlates with declension class, but not reliably and genders do cross-cut declensions. Question: what happens to these fourth declension nouns in popular latin: answer: since they need to remain feminine, they move to the predominantly feminine first declension.
